The Elijah Legacy
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by David Davis Chapter From The Elijah Legacy The Life and Times of Elijah — The Prophetic Significance for Israel, Islam and the Church in the Last Days ©2003 1 The Rise and Fall of Islam n the seventh and eighth centuries A.D. Muslim hordes swept out I of what is today Saudi Arabia and overran the Middle East. The spirit of Islam came upon the nations that surround Israel today. We have seen how the Lord used the prophetic ministries of Elijah and Elisha to confront and defeat the powers of darkness in and surrounding Israel in their generation. As terrible as the darkness was in Elijah’s day, today the situation facing Israel is much worse. Three hundred million Muslims surround five and a half million Jews. Israel is less than ten miles wide at one point. You can drive across it in ten minutes! A fierce war in the heavenlies is being waged against Israel and God’s end-time purposes. The spirit of Islam has descended like a cloud of locusts upon the Middle East. The forerunner and finisher ministries of Elijah and Elisha offer a powerful prophetic foreshadowing and example for us to follow at this kairos moment. These two prophets understood the enemy clearly. The church today needs revelation concerning the nature of Islam. We need to know our enemy if we are to be aligned with 2 The Rise and Fall of Islam The Rise and Fall of Islam 3 the Lord in His last-days conflict with Islam. The roots of the conflict The-God-Who-Sees,” for she said, “Have I also seen Him who sees between Islam, Israel, the church and the West can be traced back me?” (v. 13). I believe the Lord Jesus appeared and prophesied to to the time of Abraham. her in a theophany. Hagar obeyed the Lord and she bore a son, who On September 11, 2001, the demonic spirit of Islam was exposed was returned to Abraham. The child was to be “a wild man,” violent to all the world for those who have eyes to see. We who live and and aggressive against all. God named him Ishmael and also serve the Lord in Israel experience this most ancient of hatreds on prophesied that he would dwell near his brothers. an almost daily basis. Since the rebirth of the nation of Israel in 1948, when five Arab armies attempted to destroy the infant state, God’s Promises to Ishmael – the Arab People thousands of Arabs and Jews have died in the on-going deadly conflict. The Arab people claim descent from Ishmael, Hagar’s son. Thirteen Since September 2001, over two thousand Arabs and Jews have died. years after the birth of Ishmael when Abraham was ninety-nine, God But the current situation surrounding Israel is just the latest told the patriarch that Sarah would bear him a son. Abraham loved manifestation of an ancient hatred that goes all the way back to the his teenage boy, Ishmael, and cried out to God about him: “ ‘Oh, time of Abraham. that Ishmael might live before You!’ Then God said, ‘No, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; I will Hagar and Ishmael establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and Over four thousand years of hostilities between Arabs and Jews with his descendants after him’ ” (Gen. 17:18-19). God also answered began because of the sin of unbelief. Sarah and Abraham did not Abraham’s prayer for Ishmael: “And as for Ishmael, I have heard you. wait for the fulfillment of God’s prophetic promise. Here is the Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will genesis of the world’s longest running family feud: “Then Sarah, multiply him exceedingly. He shall beget twelve princes, and I will Abram’s wife, took Hagar her maid, the Egyptian, and gave her to make him a great nation. But My covenant I will establish with her husband Abram to be his wife, after Abram had dwelt ten years Isaac” (vs. 20-21). in the land of Canaan” (Gen. 16:3). When Hagar, the Egyptian maid became pregnant she began to “despise” her mistress, Sarah. Abram’s God’s Covenant for the Land and the Messiah wife dealt “harshly” with her pregnant maid and Hagar “fled from through Isaac her presence. Now the Angel of the Lord found her by the spring of This has been the crux of the controversy between the Arab and water in the wilderness” (16:7). The Lord had mercy on Hagar and the Jewish people for nearly four thousand years. God’s covenant Abraham’s child whom she carried. God gave the distraught Hagar promises for the land of Canaan and the coming Messiah are through this prophecy: “Behold, you are with child, and you shall bear a son. Isaac. God also promised that Ishmael would be blessed by exceeding You shall call his name Ishmael [“God hears”], because the Lord has fruitfulness, and that he would be a great nation. A glance at a map heard your affliction. He shall be a wild man; his hand shall be of the Middle East will clearly show that this prophecy has been against every man, and every man’s hand against him. And he shall fulfilled. dwell in the presence of all his brethren” (vs. 11-12). When Isaac (“laughter”), the miracle child of the covenant, Hagar called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, “You-Are- was born, relatives and friends of Abraham and Sarah celebrated with 4 The Rise and Fall of Islam The Rise and Fall of Islam 5 a great feast. All rejoiced for the patriarch, his wife and child, except of sibling strife. Even as Isaac’s wife Rebekah gave birth, the twin Hagar and Ishmael, who was “scoffing [“mocking”]” (Gen. 21:9). boys struggled together in her womb. The Lord told her that, “Two Sarah told her husband to put the “bondwoman” and her son out of nations are in your womb, two peoples are separated from your body; the house. Abraham was deeply distressed because of his love for one people shall be stronger than the other, and the older shall serve Ishmael, but the Lord told him to obey his wife. The aging patriarch the younger” (Gen. 25:23). Esau the older of the twins became a sent Hagar and his son Ishmael away. The agonizing wound of skillful hunter and was his father’s favorite. But “Rebekah loved rejection cut Hagar and Ishmael deeply. Jacob.” Esau who was called “Edom” (“red”) sold his birthright, the Ishmael and his mother wandered in the Wilderness of Beersheba double portion of the eldest son, to Jacob. “Thus Esau despised his (“seven wells”). There in the desert the mother and son drank their birthright” (v. 34). Later when Esau realized that Jacob had received last water. Hagar put Ishmael under a shrub to guard him from the the father’s blessing of the firstborn, “He cried with an exceedingly sun. In her loneliness and misery, “she said to herself, ‘Let me not great and bitter cry….and said to his father, ‘Have you only one see the death of the boy.’ So she sat opposite him, and lifted her blessing, my father? Bless me—me also, O my father!’ And Esau voice and wept” (v. 16). I have always felt this is a deeply moving lifted up his voice and wept” (Gen. 27:34,38). Isaac then prophesied picture of the Arab people, weeping in the desert over the wound of over Esau: “By your sword you shall live, and you shall serve your rejection inflicted upon them by Father Abraham. God still hears brother; and it shall come to pass, when you become restless that that cry today, even as he heard Ishmael then: “And God heard the you shall break his yoke from your neck” (v. 40). voice of the lad” (v. 17). (This is a play on words of Ishmael’s name.) Ishmael hated Isaac, and now in the next generation, “Esau hated He also answered the tears of the mother of the Arab people. “Fear Jacob.” The oldest son sold his father’s blessing for a bowl of lentils not, for God has heard the voice of the lad where he is. Arise, lift up and then declared, “I will kill my brother Jacob” (v. 41). the lad and hold him with your hand, for I will make him a great nation” (vs. 17-18). “The-God-Who-Sees” then “opened her eyes and Esau Married into Ishmael’s Family she saw a well of water….So God was with the lad” (vs. 19-20). Cunning Jacob fled from his vindictive twin brother. Esau, now Ishmael began to live in the desert where he took an Egyptian in open rebellion against his father, “saw that the daughters of Canaan wife. Many children were born to him, and his sons roamed the did not please his father Isaac, so Esau went to Ishmael and took desert often in conflict with others. Indeed, twelve Arabian princes Mahalath [“disease”] the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham’s son….to were his legacy (see Gen. 25:12–17). When Abraham died, Isaac and be his wife” (Gen. 28:8-9). (She was his third wife.) Esau knowingly Ishmael, the two half-brothers, buried their father in Hebron, in the married into the line of Ishmael and the Canaanites, a people cursed cave of Machpelah, which the patriarch had purchased.